Powell’s scaremongering is still with us 50 years on
discrimination and prejudice.
After the speech, my mother seriously contemplated the prospect they may have to return to Pakistan. She even started to make contingency plans.
My family felt the views expressed by Powell were synonymous with the Conservative Party's attitude towards immigrant communities.
The notion they would ever be able to support a party who were perceived to possess such hostility became an anathema, despite the fact the values of family, enterprise and law and order that underpin our community would make them natural Tory supporters. I don't know for certain how ingrained such thinking became in the psyche of my parents' generation. However, it's plausible to suggest these perceptions may partly explain why the Conservatives historically struggled to gain support among black and minority ethnic community and the challenges the party still faces. Anyone who saw Ian McDiarmid delivering Powell's notorious Rivers of Blood speech in the play What Shadows at the Birmingham Rep (or heard it on Radio 4 last weekend) will have been struck by how those words could so easily have been spoken during the 2016 EU referen- dum campaign. It is clear some campaigners on the Leave side recognised that fears and anxieties could be exploited.
We saw the depiction of images of non-white migrants and refugees arriving with the slogan ‘breaking point'.
We were told Turkey was on the brink of joining the EU which would increase the strain on Britain's public services and pose a threat to national security.
And just this week, there have been admissions from figures in the Leave and Trump campaigns admitting they used the techniques pioneered by Powell: picking on a group and preying on ordinary people's fears and prejudices.
The fact is, Birmingham shows how Powell lost the argument.
It wouldn't be the vibrant and cosmopolitan city it is without its large immigrant population, and illustrates what a positive force such diversity can be on a city and a region.
However, while his pessimistic prophecy of ‘rivers of blood' never materialised, the sad reality is that the method of using immigration as a tool to stoke up fear is still prevalent to this day.
What we saw during the referendum serves as a reminder that the challenge of combating such prejudices is as important today as it was 50 years ago.
Amil Khan is an activist for the Conservative party in Birmingham
The method of using immigration as a tool to stoke up fear is still prevalent to this day